Book Reviews

The Clinical Practice of Critical Care Neurology, 2nd Edition

by Eelco F.M. Wijdicks,
598 pp., ill., New York, Oxford University Press, 2003, $129.50

The second edition of The Clinical Practice of Critical Care Neurology is a comprehensive, well-organized, and lavishly illustrated book that emphasizes the day-to-day practice of neurologic intensive care. The book is a rarity in that it is a single author text. Judging by the sheer amount of effort that must have gone into its creation, and the thoughtfulness and clarity with which the material is presented, one gets the impression that this book was written as a labor of love. Accordingly, the book is infused with a sense of passion and enthusiasm that makes it a joy to read.

The book serves as a powerful reminder of the advantages of a single authored text. Besides avoiding the usual problems with multiauthored editions—redundancy, inconsistencies of detail, and variations in quality—each chapter adheres to a central unifying theme: evidence-based practice recommendations based on rigorous review of the scientific literature. In a sense, the chapters in this book resemble a series of meticulously referenced state-of-the-art reviews in neurocritical care, but instead of being written by a consensus committee, it is largely one man’s point of view (which makes it livelier and more interesting to read). As a result, this book truly fills a gap. Most clinical neurology texts, including more than a few devoted to neurocritical care, seem to suffer from the same affliction: an overemphasis on description, diagnosis, anatomy, and pathophysiology, with scanty discussions of treatment tacked on …